As the end of the year comes to an end, its unbelievable the amount of activities that my class participated in this year. It began with a Gingerbread Hunt and ended with a field trip to a local butterfly garden. Not to mention everything in between!

This summer I encourage all educators to relax and enjoy their summers. Parents take time to spend precious moments with you child. My exciting trip will be to China to teach teachers for six weeks. If anyone has been, please share your story.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this year. I am going to send the last few days of my school year with my soon-to-be first graders! Have a great summer!

I wanted to share with you the space activity I did with my students. I had the students create their own planet on Kidspix. I encouraged them to be creative. I had a balloon planet and a planet that only cooked blueberry pancakes. After they were done creating the planet, I printed each child's planet and gave it to them. They then had to write about their planet. I told them I wanted at least 3 sentences but most of my students wrote more. They had a great time coming up with new ideas for their planet.

After they were done writing about their planet, I recorded them reading about their planet using Audacity. Each student had a chance to record. They are now so comfortable recording, it only took 19 students about 20 minutes total to record. I was impressed.

When the student were done recording, I exported their planet pictures out of Kidspix as a JPEG and took the MP3 from Audacity and created a planet movie using Microsoft MovieMaker. Here is one example:

This week we prepared for the wedding of the letters Q and U to make the "qu" sound. Many arrangements were made. The vowels were invited and presents for the bride and groom were made. Girls wore veils and carried flowers and the boys wore top hats. The bridal party marched down the aisle to Cannon in D as the shushers held Quiet signs. The flower girl threw the paper letters and our principal conducted the ceremony.

We started having this ceremony last year to help remind our students that Q always needs U during spelling. The week leading up to the ceremony, we did activities and read books that helped the students understand the concept. One of the activities is a word blend sorting. I made index cards that have words begin with "qu", "th", "sh", and "ch" blends. I have the students sort the words and then type the words onto an alphasmart.

After the ceremony, we opened the gifts that the students made for Q and U. The students brought in quarters, Quaker oats, Q-tips, a quarterback, quills, a quilt, and a crown fit for a queen. The students had a blast during the ceremony. They enjoyed sharing their gifts with the class and they will always remember the wedding of Q and U!

"The more that you read, The more things that you know. The more that you learn, The more places you'll go." Dr Seuss - Oh, The Places You'll Go!

In honor of Dr. Seuss birthday, I read as many of his books throughout the entire week.The students love hearing the stories and enjoy reading along with me. I think it is important to read as much as I can with my class. Reading is truly a meaningful learning experience that opens many doors for the reader.

One of my students brought in the Dr. Seuss book "There's a Wocket in My Pocket". This book is filled with tongue twisters and there is a warning in the beginning of the book that states that this book is dangerous. The class thought it was hilarious to hear me reading the book that they actually started counting each mistake I made. I'm proud to say I only made nine mistakes.

We also made green eggs and ham with another kindergarten class. As Mrs. Miller made the green eggs and ham, I read the book. I tried to have each student try a small amount but I did have some students refuse to touch it. I love asking the students if they think they might like it before hand. I get so many wrinkle noses and scrunched up faces but after they try it I have many begging for seconds.

I always take time to share facts and pictures of Dr. Seuss because I have many students who do not realize he was a real person. The students find it fascinating to hear how he came up with his stories and that he illustrated his books. I always have fun during the week of Dr. Seuss's birthday.

With all the reasons to stress this week, I decided to enjoy the weather and take my students outside to the playground for lunch. It was a picture perfect Florida day. The students thought this was the best day ever! I even had a chance to relax and enjoy the day.

It still amazes me that something as simple as taking my students outside for lunch can excite the class greatly. I remember my teachers spending lunch time with us. It was something to look forward to. Now, I realize what a scarifice it is to give up my quiet lunch. I strongly believe eating lunch with my students is a wonderful way to build a relationship with my students but I do give up my bathroom break and time to check my e-mails. I think it's worth it though. I normally eat lunch with my class on Fridays and I think I have just as much fun as the students do.

This week I introduced space with books with Scholastic BookFlix. Bookflix is a book resource that takes a subject and presents it with a fiction and non-fiction book. Each book provides users with additional resources that help students expand their knowledge on the topic.

Since we were learning about space, I had the students begin the day with watching Happy Birthday Moon by Frank Asch. The students enjoyed watching the story on the computer. The story is presented with animation and background music that sets the mood of the story. The students are able to follow along as the narrator reads the story as each word becomes highlighted.

Happy Birthday Moon has follow Puzzlers that help the students build their comprehension questions. I enjoyed the puzzle Which Came First? Here the students place the sequence of events in order. I thought it was clever that Scholastic provided ways for younger users to listen to the direction. The students click on the ear and then are able to listen to what they need to do.

After watching Happy Birthday Moon in the morning, I had the students watch the non-fiction book Updated: The Moon. Here the students were able to physically click through the fiction book on the moon. They could either drag the top corner of the page to switch pages or click the green arrow. Students have the option to read the story on their own or listen as the narrator reads the story. Words are also highlighted through the book. These words are vocabulary words. The reader can roll their mouse over the words and listen to the definition.

There are puzzlers for the non-fiction book as well. One of the puzzles is a word match that follows up with the vocabulary words. There is one more puzzle that compares the two books and asks the students to decide if the statement is fact or fiction.

I also found that it offers a biography on Frank Asch. I thought it was a great way for the students to relate to the author. Again for young readers, it has the option to listen to the biography or for older readers to read it. For teachers there is also a section to extend the lesson online. Scholastic provides websites that reinforce the lesson on space.

Overall, I was impressed with the product. I will always believe teachers should not let the computer to the teaching but let technology enhance learning. This site does have a free trial that I strongly believe you should check out. There are many stories and many topics to choose from!

My class was excited for Valentine's Day. A week before our Valentine's Card Exchange, I sent home a note to the parents with a list of all the student's names for the students to make valentines for their classmates. I had valentines coming in the next day! The entire week leading up to the exchange, the students could only talk about the cards they were making.

Finally Friday was here and we exchanged the valentines. The students had decorated bags for their cards. I gave them a white paper bag and let them use markers to decorate. There was a peaceful moment as the class was decorating their bags. Some students were talking quietly and some were not talking at all. I allowed them to take as long as they wanted to color the bags.

I also had the students make a tissue paper heart. The students cut out a heart and glued pink, red, and purple tissue paper to the heart. We were also learning symmetry that week and I had the students create another heart that was symmetrical. We had a quiet morning as the students worked hard on their work. I had a thought that we should have more morning like this where the students can relax and work at their own pace. Some mornings, I feel we do too much and the students never have a time to just sit back and relax.

When it was time the students to pass out their cards, I handed each one their pile to pass out. The class was so excited to receive cards from their friends. I had students helping each other pass out cards. I let them go through their bags for a short amount of time. I didn't want them to mix up their cards with their friends at their tables too much.

Now when I'm looking back on Friday, I think I had one of those "a little goes a long way" moments. I didn't go overboard with the Valentine's activities but I feel that the students had just as much fun, if not more, than if we had done a big Valentine's party. We had a simple Valentine's Day where the students truly cared about each other. That's what Valentine's Day is all about!

This week, I noticed I haven't done any podcasting with my class in awhile. I decided I wanted to do two podcasts with my students for the 100th day of school. While we were recording our podcasts, I noticed how comfortable they were talking into the microphone compared to the beginning of the school year when they were afraid to talk. Podcasting is just like anything else. The more you do it, the more comfortable you become.

The first podcast we recorded was our class book "If I had $100 I would ______". The students had a blast coming up with ideas of what they would buy. I had many students ask me what I would buy and when I told them I would buy an IPhone, I had one student tell me that I would need more money because an IPhone cost $200 instead of $100. All I could do was laugh. Below is our podcast. Please be patience as it downloads.

Our second podcast was the entire class counting to 100. In the beginning of the school year, I had my students listen to my previous class count to 100. I had many students ask if we could record our class counting. I made a deal with them. I told them when everyone in our class could count to 100 we would record. I had many determine students come to me and count. Before I knew it, my whole class knew how to count to 100. I decided to wait to our 100th day of school to record them. Below is our podcast count to 100. Enjoy!

It amazed me this week when my class celebrated our 100th day of school. Every year after the holidays, my mom always says "now the rest of the school year is going to fly by". She's right. I feel like we just had our winter break but instead, I'm looking for 100th day activities and searching for Valentine's Day activities.

For our 100th day celebration, I asked the students bring in 100 items from home. I asked the students to group the items by 10s and mount the items on a poster board. Some of the items the students brought in were 100 pennies, 100 balloons, 100 buttons, and 100 green items. I allowed each student to briefly share their poster to the class. During math, I had the students count the items on each poster. We rotated around the classroom allowing each student to count each classmates items. I heard students counting by 1s, 5s, and 10s. I had the students rotate with a partner. I saw many groups working together and helping each other count. The students loved counting their friends items. After the students had a chance with each poster, I laid all the posters on the floor and we counted by 100s to discover we had 1000 items. My class thought it was "very cool" that we had 1000 items in our classroom. I like to show them how much 1000 looks like.

At computer, the students created 100 items using Kidspix. Our computer lab teacher had a template for the students to use. The template had 10 boxes required the students to fill each box with 10 imagines from Kidspix. Here are some examples: